Bell

  
   

Unknown

Bell

This newness of snow. This boot-ringing

as the snow warms in the sun to crush. These holes

we wind around the witnessing pines. This

violation of white. This slowness of moose.

This counting of steps. This counting of scars

in the bark: the wary burl bulging low

on the trunk, the black scratchings left

by a bear learning to climb. This counting

of sleeps between this country and the next country

we call home. These branches shucking off

the statuesque in avalanches of needles and ice.

This progress, as in the wind-scalloped snow meadow

pretending to be moon. This love that sets us scrambling

over the map's last ridge, our red hoods bright

in shrunken sky. This metallic weather in which we

are the ore. This alder. These crimson-tipped willows

reverberating next to a river of turquoise ice. This

following the deep tracks of one coyote stepping

where another has stepped. This wilderness

that we trespass, burning like berries in the juniper

and becoming the air in the belfry.

Cecily Parks 

 

It's as if we are walking with the speaker, as if she is pointing out each thing to us, "This, this..." as if in proof of something spoken of before the poem began. Almost as if she is taking us on the trail of something, the signs, as it were - clues. 

And what do they lead to or from?

 

 

 

Sledding in Wichita

Claudette Castonguay

Sledding in Wichita

 

As cars pass, laboring through the slush,

a boy, bundled against the stiff wind

in his snow suit, gloves, and scarf,

leans on his upright toboggan,

waiting his turn atop

the snow-packed overpass—

the highest point in town.

First one car exits, and then another,

each creeping down the icy ramp.

The brown grass pokes through

the two grooves carved in the short hill.

As the second car fishtails to a stop at the bottom,

brake lights glowing on the dirty snow,

the boy’s turn comes.

His trip to the bottom is swift—

only a second or two—

and he bails out just before the curb.

It’s not much, but it’s sledding in Wichita.

Casey Pycior

 

 

The unusually beneficent state of Snow we have been living in has brought back memories of hill-hunting and the joy of even the very briefest speed-gathering velocities of sledding in urban settings where every bump and lump of landscape becomes a possibility for fun and danger - especially in an otherwise flat environment.

 

 It's not much, but it's also everything.